The disclaimer is
that we are only going to consider the films honored since 1940,
simply because we don't know that much about the earlier ones.

The note is
that the scores in parentheses represent IMDb weighted ratings. When
we refer to "best" or "worst", or the differential between them, we
are citing the mathematical evaluation by IMDb members, not our own
evaluation.

People often discuss their pet injustice among nominated films, like Citizen
Kane's loss to How Green Was My Valley. People assume that undeserving
Oscar winners have unjustly edged out worthy nominees. That has not
usually been the case. The most typical circumstance that produced a mediocre winner was a combination of
(1) a
poor field of nominees, and (2) a year when the very best pictures were not
nominated for one reason or another. Out of Africa may be the
worst film ever to win the Best Picture nod, but there was no clear
injustice involved. The field of nominees was weak. The best film of
the year was probably Terry Gilliam's Brazil, which was not only
ignored by the academy, but was shelved by its own studio until
Gilliam flushed it out of hiding with a personal campaign.

The same case could
be cited for such uninspired winners as Driving Miss Daisy, The
English Patient, Gigi, and Around the World in Eighty
Days. Each was a reasonable choice among a field of nominees that
was weaker than usual.

Of course, there were
also some choices among nominees that don't seem wise today. There are
even a few that don't seem comprehensible. It seems incredible that so
many people once voted for Chariots of Fire over Raiders of
the Lost Ark, for example, but the academy has always been subject to societal
pressures which cause it to vacillate in its evaluation of pure
entertainment movies. The academy received so much flack for choosing
lightweight pictures like Gigi, Oliver, My Fair Lady, and The Greatest
Show on Earth, that it became very sensitive about choosing pure
entertainment movies over films with serious aspirations. So it
happened that, on a mathematical
basis, the single worst choice between nominees occurred in 1981, when
a great entertainment film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, lost out to
the noble but mediocre Chariots of Fire.

Amazingly, that
wasn't the most glaring difference between a winner and another film
from the same year. The ultimate hose
job occurred in 1952, when the Academy made every possible
mistake. It gave the award to a mediocre film. There was a much better
nominated film. The best film wasn't nominated at all! The winner that year, incredible though it seems, was
The
Greatest Show on Earth, an insipid circus movie which featured
cameos from everyone in Hollywood. High Noon was the nominated
loser. The unnominated classic was Singin' in the Rain.

The other most
glaring cases of the Academy's failure to recognize genius were

(1) the Oscar won by
Around the World in 80 Days, a trite film, in a year when John Ford's masterpiece,
The Searchers, went unnominated.

(2) the Oscar won by
Gigi in a year when Hitchcock's Vertigo was not
nominated.

Although the judgment
of history has been different, Ford's westerns and Hitchcock's
psychological thrillers were consistently underappreciated or
unappreciated by
Hollywood. Rear Window is in a virtual mathematical tie
with three other films for the distinction of being the best eligible
film to remain unnominated.

What were the most
obvious cases of one nominee beating out another far superior nominee?

The Winner

The Loser

Rating Differential

Chariots of Fire

Raiders of the Lost Ark

-1.6

The Greatest Show on Earth

High Noon

-1.4

Titanic

L.A. Confidential

-1.2

What were the most
obvious cases of one nominee beating out another far superior eligible
movie, whether it was nominated or not?